Making decisions as you and your Leadership Team work on your business is a thoughtful process. And during that process, doubts most likely creep into your thinking periodically.

Doubts are those nagging feelings of uncertainty, where you may question a belief or hesitate to take action. Doubts generally make us uncomfortable. They leave us feeling anxious. After all, we’re entrepreneurs, leaders, managers – we’re supposed to be decisive and have all the answers at our fingertips. Right?

Keeping things simple is your business’s path to success.

That may seem counterintuitive, because as your business grows, your company becomes more complex. So it may be natural for you to assume that by employing more people, offering more products and reaching more customers, your business would need to be more complicated.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

When working with our leadership teams, we spend a lot of time strengthening the People Component of their business. We work on the two disciplines: getting the Right People into the Right Seats on the Accountability Chart™. You must have both – Right People and Right Seats.

I have helped a number of leadership teams make the difficult people decision when they determine one of their employees is either the wrong person or in the wrong seat. Our approach to this issue is the Three Strike Rule.

The majority of companies I work with tell me during our initial meeting that they have a great team. Their definition of “great” usually means something like being trustworthy, competent, working hard, and following the boss’s directions.

And while those are all wonderful traits to have, sometimes I smile inwardly; sometimes I am truly skeptical. Sound harsh? Well, it’s not meant to.

I think we could all agree that being open and honest is important in our personal lives. Our friends and our family members value it, and it helps us build relationships and establish trust with the people we care about.

And much like our personal lives, being open and honest can have a strong impact on the people in our professional lives, such as our employees, our customers, and our community.

I have already discussed how being open and honest builds the foundation of your business. Openness and honesty are used to communicate your business’s Core Values, and provide a list of expectations your employees live by.

But in addition to building a foundation, being open and honest plays a fundamental role in helping us resolve issues.